Calls for action against live organ harvesting of Falun Gong

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are said to die each year in China. Evidence reportedly indicates these prisoners are also victims of having their organs harvested by force. Calls for action are being voiced from various corners of the world.

China’s Organ Trade – Heart per Order

By Martina Keller, Die ZEIT –

In China, body organs are taken from executed prisoners, and for a fee, are then implanted in patients from the West.

Organ harvesting Conference calling on Taiwanese to pay more attention to human rights issues in China

(Taipei Times)– Despite economic growth, the condition of human rights in China is still very bad — especially when it comes to the persecution of religious and minority groups by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — participants at a conference on human rights in China said yesterday, calling on Taiwanese to pay more attention to human rights issues in China.

“Taiwanese are not paying enough attention to issues related to human rights and democracy in China, and I think the first thing we can do to help China democratize is show more concern,” said Maysing Yang (楊黃美幸), deputy executive director of Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a sponsor of the conference organized by the Association for Free Communication.

Chinese Version of ‘Bloody Harvest’ Released in Taiwan

The two authors of the book Bloody Harvest, who were also 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominees, attended the launch for the Chinese translation of Bloody Harvest, held at the Legislative Yuan (the national legislature) in Taiwan on June 28.

Each of the two authors, David Kilgour, who was the former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), and David Matas, the award-winning international human rights lawyer, spoke.

David Kilgour said that since 2006 he and David Matas had traveled to four continents and more than 40 countries, breaking through various obstacles to collect evidence, and arrived at the conclusion that large-scale live organ harvesting from Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners did happen and continues even today.

Fraud Fuels China’s Underground Organ Industry

To find clients, Cai Shaohua would hang out outside dialysis units at major hospitals in Beijing. A kidney broker in China’s Wild West organ transplant market, it was up to him to find the recipient, while another broker rustled up donors. If the donor passed the physical, Cai would then falsify documents for 400 yuan ($61).

Cai, now a disgraced organ broker who is telling it all, explained to Chinese Life Week magazine that recipients pay between 110,000 and 120,000 yuan ($16,858 to $18,390) for a kidney. He, the other broker, and the donor each get a third.

Source of Organs for Transplants a Mystery in China- No voluntary donations in Nanjing City for a year

Each year 1.5 million people in China need an organ transplant, but no one wants to donate. This was shown in a recent study reported by the Yangtse Evening Post. After one year, a pilot organ donation program in Nanjing City found zero volunteers.

The Feb. 24 piece in the Post said Nanjing was one of the ten cities chosen for the 2010 pilot because of its rapidly expanding population of 6.3 million. Not only were there no takers last year, but over the past 20 years there were only three voluntary donations, the article said.

Organ Transplant Expert Refuses China’s Invitation

By Robin Kemker, Epoch Times Staff, Dec 30, 2010-

TORRANCE, Calif.— Dr. Eric J. Goldberg has been researching organ harvesting allegations since attending a conference on transplantation in Boston in 2006. He is the chief medical research director of a major international clinical research corporation.

Dr. Goldberg discussed and answered questions on Dec. 22 on the issues of organ harvesting and transplantation in China with Dr. Dana Churchill, the Southern California spokesperson for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH). It is a non-profit founded by medical doctors to inform the medical community and the public with findings of unethical and illegal organ harvesting.  The non-profit was the organizer of the discussion and press-conference.

Doctor warns medical community about China’s organ harvesting

By Melissa Evans Staff Writer, Dec. 22, 2010 –

For Dr. Eric Jay Goldberg, an international organ transplant expert, the math doesn’t add up.

In the United States, those who need kidney transplants wait between three to five years for donor match to surface; for those who need a liver, the wait is about seven years.

But for paying customers, China will perform kidney transplants in a week, and can find a liver in about a month.

“You would have to have thousands and thousands of donors to satisfy that demand,” said Goldberg, who spoke Wednesday at a medical center in Torrance. “China can hardly account for that kind of supply.”

AI Warns Drug Companies of China’s illegal practices of Organ Transplant

The growing organ transplant industry in China has attracted investments of foreign pharmaceutical companies, specializing in organ transplant drugs. But a representative from Amnesty International in Switzerland says these companies need to consider more than just business when engaging with China because of the illegal practices taking place there.

[Danièle Gosteli, Economy & Human Rights, Amnesty International, Swiss Action]:
“Of course if an international company knowingly participates and continues to do so even with the knowledge of organ trade, this would have a very bad effect on its reputation.”

Speech: Preventing Organ Transplant Abuse in China

By David Matas-

The following remarks were delivered at a United Nations Conference called “Advance Global Health” in Melbourne, Australia, on Aug. 31.

David Kilgour and I have concluded (first in a report released in July 2006 and updated in January 2007, and then in a book titled Bloody Harvest, released in November 2009) that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed in China in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to transplant patients. I invite you to take a look at our report, which is online, or read our book to see how we came to that conclusion. Falun Gong is a simple set of exercises with a spiritual foundation that started in China in 1992 and was banned in 1999.

This abuse in China has to be of concern to the global community because it is a grave human rights violation which should concern all humanity, but also because the developed world has been complicit in the abuse. When China shifted from socialism to capitalism, the state withdrew funds from the health system.

Since 1980, government spending dropped from 36 percent of all health care expenditure to 17 percent, while patients’ out of pocket spending rocketed up from 20 percent to 59 percent. A World Bank study reported that reductions in public health coverage were worsened by increases in costs by the private sector.

According to cardiovascular doctor Hu Weimin, the state funding for the hospital where he was working was not enough to even cover staff salaries for one month. He stated: “Under the current system, hospitals have to chase profit to survive.” Human Rights in China reports: “Rural hospitals [have had] to invent ways to make money to generate sufficient revenue.”

Hospitals needed to find private funding to replace state funding. Foreign sales of organs became the primary money maker. The Organ Transplant Centre of the Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing for instance stated on its website: “Our Organ Transplant Centre is our main department for making money. Its gross income in 2003 was 16,070,000 yuan. From January to June of 2004 income was 13,570,000 yuan. This year (2004) there is a chance to break through 30,000,000 yuan.”

The Chinese health system began the organ transplant business by selling organs of prisoners sentenced to death. However, eventually, despite the large number of death sentences and executions in China, this supply became insufficient. So hospitals and prisons turned to another source—Falun Gong practitioners.

For years, patients from developed countries came over in the thousands to buy organs in China. The Government of China, in June 2007, ordered the hospitals to give priority to local patients. What before was a foreign flow became a trickle. Transplant volumes today are at traditional levels. So, with minor variations, are the sources. However, the patient composition has changed dramatically.

We cannot nonetheless say that because the patient composition is now mostly local, Chinese organ transplant abuse has ceased to be an international problem. If a pusher gets a client addicted to heroin, the pusher cannot claim innocence because the client now grows his own opium. If a bartender plies a client nightly with drinks and the client becomes an alcoholic, the bartender cannot later plead that the client now uses only his own home made moonshine.

Learning from the Chinese experience and reacting now is more than just shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped. Even the trickle of foreign patients now justifies concern. As well, learning from the experience helps us prevent its reoccurrence…….(more details from The Epochtimes)

Speech: Ending Abuse of Organ Transplantation in China

Revised remarks prepared for delivery to The Transplantation Society Congress, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Aug. 17, 2010, By David Matas –

I am amazed it has taken this long.  Finally people are starting to take the abuse of organ transplant surgery in China seriously. There have been isolated pockets of concern before.  But an abuse which dates from the 1980’s is only now, twenty five years too late, generating widespread notice.

China, from the very moment it began transplant surgery, killed non-consenting donors for their organs.  The law even allowed for it.

The Regulations on the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs From Condemned Criminals, dated October 9, 1984, contemplated involuntary organ sourcing from prisoners sentenced to death and then executed.  The law set out three events which could allow for harvesting of organs.

One event was consent of the source, the prisoner.  A second event was consent of the family.  A third event was the refusal or failure of the family to collect the body of the executed prisoner.

The law, then, allowed organ harvesting with consent, but did not prohibit organ harvesting without consent.  That meant that, even where there was an express refusal of consent, both by the prisoner before death and the family after death, but the family refused or even just neglected to collect the body, then organs could, according to the law, still be harvested.

In 1984, when this law was enacted, China was still in the early stages of its shift from socialism to capitalism.  As the shift progressed, the health system became a major part of the shift. From 1980, the Government began withdrawing funds from the health sector, expecting the health system to make up the difference through charges to consumers of health services.

The sale of organs for transplants became the primary source of funds.  There is global demand for organs because of shortages everywhere.  The sale of organs became for hospitals a way to keep their doors open, and a means by which other health services could be provided to the community. This dire need for funds led to a rationalization that selling the organs of prisoners who would be executed anyway was acceptable and to a desire not to question too closely whether the donors wheeled in by the authorities really were prisoners sentenced to death.

Organ price lists were posted on Chinese websites. Hospitals boasted openly on their websites about the money being made from the sale of organs.

China began the organ trade by selling the organs of prisoners sentenced to death.  But the global demand for organs and the health system need for money eventually outgrew the available death row supply.  The Falun Gong community became the next source.

Falun Gong is a simple set of exercises with a spiritual foundation which started in China in 1992.  The belief behind the exercises is a blending and updating of the Chinese Buddhist and Tao traditions.

The Chinese Communist Party/state at first encouraged the exercises because they are healthful.  With official encouragement, the practice of the exercises spread rapidly to the point where there were more practitioners than members of the Communist Party.

The Party then, in June 1999, out of jealousy and fear of losing ideological supremacy, banned the exercises.  When practitioners persisted and protested, the Party/state in November 1999 got vicious — vilifying the practice through propaganda, arresting practitioners, torturing them to elicit recantations, and disappearing them if they did not recant.

Practitioners of Falun Gong quickly became the number one victims of repression in China — two thirds of the torture victims, according to the United Nations rapporteur in torture; one half of those in the slave labour camps, according to the United States Department of State Human Rights reports.  Many of those Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested and refused to recant also refused to identify themselves, in order to protect their friends, family and workplaces back home who otherwise would have been victimized for not having denounced them.  The depersonalization of the Falun Gong, their huge numbers in detention and their vulnerability as an unidentified population made it easy for them to become the next source of organs for sale.

According to research David Kilgour and I did, first in a report released in July 2006 and updated in January 2007, and then in a book titled Bloody Harvest released in November 2009, we concluded that Falun Gong were killed in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to foreigners, generating a billion dollar business for China.  We launched a global campaign to attempt to end the abuse we identified, speaking in over forty countries and eighty cities about our research.

The Chinese government reacted to our work, but not always in ways which countered our concerns.  The Government took down Chinese internet information we referenced.  We archived it all so that you can see it on our website.  However, because of official blocking, internet users can no longer see it in China.

The Government through its embassies, consulates and front organizations, made every effort, wherever we went, to prevent or cancel our speaking engagements, and to bar or discourage people from meeting with us.  The Party/state churned out hostile propaganda, mostly by attacking Falun Gong or us personally, without dealing with the substance of our research.

At this Congress, the reaction of a delegate from China to my presentation, expressed during the question period, was typical of the Communist Party.  He stated that the organizers should not have allowed me to speak and attacked my presentation at a personal level without offering a hint of rebuttal.

The Chinese speaker did, to a certain extent, get his way.  Congress rules were enforced selectively to impede attendance at the event where I spoke.

At the door of the room to the Congress session where I presented, unlike any other event I and others observed at the Congress, there was an astounding number of eight security people turning away those who were registered at the Congress but who did not have blue colour coded delegate badges.  People who had stayed in the corridor outside the room during the session informed me that large numbers were denied entry.  At other Congress events, including lunch, registered attendees without blue color coded badges entered unimpeded, even though in theory the colour coding on their badges did not entitle them to entry. ….. (more details from The Epoch Times)

David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Event Vancouver: Nobel Nominee David Matas to address to International Conference of the Abuse of Organ Transplantation in China

– From “Between Heaven and Earth“:

Nobel Nominee David Matas will be part of a long list of presenters who will speak at the XXIII International Congress of the Transplantation Society to be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre from 15-19 August. This congress will be one of the largest international gatherings of clinicians and scientists in the transplantation field and it is estimated that 4000 people will attend.

Mr. Matas is scheduled to speak at this Conference on Tuesday August 17 from 3.30 to 5 p.m. as part of a panel on Ethics, Public Policy and Economics. His topic will be “Ending abuse of organ transplantation in China”; session is numbered 036. The link to the full program is here.

Canada’s medical profession is the first in the world to develop an official policy statement on organ trafficking which will be discussed at the Congress. Buying and selling livers, hearts, kidneys and other body parts is illegal in Canada and most countries, but the enterprise continues in many developing countries. From 2000 to 2008 in B.C. alone, 93 Canadians, 90 per cent of them ethnic minorities from countries such as China, India and Pakistan, bought kidneys overseas.

“In fact my research on this matter led me to conclude that prisoners of the spiritual movement Falun Gong were the subject of having their organs taken without their consent and sometimes at the cost of their lives,” said Matas. “I’m involved in this as an activist who speaks up for human rights issues. It is the doctors and hospitals in China conducting these organ harvestings, noting that the government is not innocent in the matter. In China, without government sanctioning, nothing can happen. The solution is for this to stop. People must campaign against it publicly and speak on the issue, then getting extra territorial legislation on organ transplanting.”

Amnesty International is taking the opportunity of this Congress to call on pharmaceutical companies to exercise due diligence to ensure that they are not directly or indirectly implicated in the taking or use of organs from executed prisoners. Amnesty International believes that the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners in China must be stopped and, in establishing alternatives, much more must be done to develop and implement effective regulatory mechanisms.

As well Doctors against forced organ harvesting (DAFOH) adds in its appeal to research and pharmaceutical companies to refrain from performing clinical trials in transplant medicine in the People’s Republic of China.

David Matas is a senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada and a member of the Order of Canada. Mr. Matas was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his intensive investigation over a four-year period into the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. His work had culminated into a book called “Bloody Harvest: The killing of Falun Gong for their organs”, which was published in late 2009. Matas had won the prestigious 2009 Human Rights Award from the International Society for Human Rights for this work.

– Source: Between Heaven and Earth

Lawyer Nominated for Nobel Over His Work On China Organ Harvesting

By Geoff Kirbyson, The Lawyers Weekly, Canada, March 19 2010 issue –

David Matas might be the only lawyer in Canada trying to follow in the footsteps of Barack Obama.

While the Winnipeg-based human rights crusader and immigration and refugee lawyer has run for political office in the past, it’s his nomination for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize that has drawn a link with the most powerful man in the world.

Matas and his research partner, David Kilgour, a federal Alberta MP between 1976 and 2006, have been nominated for their investigation into allegations that Falun Gong followers in China are being murdered for their hearts, kidneys, corneas, livers and other organs.

Matas, 66, says he’s honoured by the nomination but not because of the man who precedes them.

‘If you look at the history of the Nobel Peace Prize award, there’s a wide variety of nominees and backgrounds,’ he says. ‘(The nomination) helps highlight the work that David and I have been doing. It becomes another means of advocacy and promotion to bring attention to the problem and to end the abuse.’

The award’s winner will be announced in October and the presentation ceremony will be held in December.

Matas says he estimates China does about 10,000 organ transplants annually, with roughly one-quarter of the organs coming from prisoners on death row and the balance coming from Falun Gong followers. Initially, virtually all of the organ recipients were foreigners, primarily people from Korea, Hong Kong and Indonesia, but China subsequently began giving its own people preferential treatment for the procedures.

Falun Gong is a religious movement based on the teachings of its founder, Li Hongzhi, which uses aspects of Buddhism, Taoism and modern science. The movement, which began in 1992, became immensely popular in China but the Chinese government considered it a cult and cracked down on it more than a decade ago, persecuting, jailing and executing its followers.

Matas says the Chinese government uses the organ transplants to generate revenue. At one point, prices were listed on an official government website while Chinese hospitals promoted the ‘business’ on their own websites. A kidney, for example, will set somebody back $62,000 while a liver ranges from $98,000 to $130,000, a heart will run you $130,000 to $160,000 and a lung can cost anywhere from $150,000 to $170,000. If you’re into volume discounts, a liver-kidney combination can be had for between $160,000 and $180,000.

‘(The discount) is an indication that people are being killed for their organs rather than everywhere else in the world where people wait for somebody else to die. Why would you get a discount for a combination transplant except that the organs are coming from the same donor?’ he says.

Matas says the most common transplanted organ around the world is the kidney because a donor can donate one and still survive. Except in China, it seems.

‘Our conclusion is multiple organs are being harvested (per donor). We’ve never met or heard of a surviving kidney donor. If there were survivors, you’d think you’d hear about them,’ he says.

Canadian Lawyer Nominated for Nobel Prize for His Work on Organ Harvesting Issue in China

Editorial, The Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, Feb. 20, 2010-

Many Winnipeggers could not pick David Matas out of a crowd. His relative public obscurity at home, however, belies the man’s international profile for work that has garnered him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The breadth of Mr. Matas’s human rights work has taken him far afield — into the world of international courts, United Nations missions and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals — and into the homes of children plugged into virtual relationships where Internet predators lurk. A founding member of Beyond Borders, he helped fight for the tougher child exploitation laws in Canada.

Much of his work has been championing the rights of immigrants and refugees, battling the abuses and legal chasms that catch up the innocent and controversial alike. One client, Vancouverite Lai Changxing, has been called China’s most wanted man. The reputed billionaire is accused by the Communist government of building his fortune on smuggling and on bribing officials. Lai is a lightning rod for those who see Canada’s lax immigration law providing safe haven for criminals. Undaunted, Mr. Matas argues Lai could not possibly get a fair trial in a country where officials have publicly stated he deserves the penalty of multiple deaths.

It is Mr. Matas’s work with former MP David Kilgour on the persecution of the Falun Gong adherents in China that brings him now to the notice of Norway’s Nobel Committee. They have been co-nominated for their 2006 independent investigation of allegations the Chinese state’s abuses, imprisonment and torturing of adherents had extended to organ harvesting — resulting in the prisoners’ deaths — to serve transplantation tourists.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a bit battered of late. Never granted to Mahatma Ghandi, the world’s most famous peace activist, it was the source of wide-spread derision in December when it was bestowed on Barack Obama. The U.S. president, barely minted, was honoured for strengthening international diplomacy and for his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Even Mr. Obama was surprised.

Mr. Matas faces long odds in getting to the podium at the end of the year. His nomination, however, returns a small measure of gratitude to a humble and deserving man. It may help raise the esteem of the Norwegian prize a notch.

– The Winnipeg Free Press

Worst firm award won by Swiss drugs company Roche over organ transplant in China

AFP, Jan. 27, 2010-

DAVOS, Switzerland — The Royal Bank of Canada and Swiss drugs giant Roche won the dubious honour Wednesday of an award for the worst firms for the environment and social responsibility, announced in Davos.

The Canadian bank received the prize for being the “largest financier of environmentally as well as socially disastrous oil sands extraction in the Canadian province of Alberta,” said ecological group Greenpeace and Swiss non-governmental organisation Berne Declaration.

Roche meanwhile won the “People’s Award,” having received the most votes from the public over its organ transplant studies in China, where over 90 percent of all transplanted organs originated from prisoners, said organisers.

“Roche cannot and will not confirm the origins of some 300 organs used for its trials,” organisers said, during the awards at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.

Contacted by AFP, the Swiss group said it conducted drug trials of its Cellcept medication on patients in China, but that it did not have the right to know the origins of the organs, a spokeswoman said.

“The problem (of executions) has been known for several years and we are working to improve the situation” such that the Chinese authorities would conform to international norms in the issue of organ donations, she added……. (more details from AFP)

Speech: Responsible Engagement With China (5)- “Non consenting parties”

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D., German-American Institute, Heidelberg, Germany, 11 January 2010 – (cont’d)

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Sourcing of organs from prisoners is done without their consent. Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu in Guangzhou in November 2006 said in a speech, “too often organs come from non consenting parties”. At the time of the announcement of an organ donor pilot project, Huang indicated that executed prisoners “are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants”. This principle, that prisoners are not an acceptable source for organs, is followed by the Transplantation Society and the World Medical Association. So what is the rule of law world going to do about the party-state’s abuse of global transplant ethics? Our report and book have a long list of recommendations, but, given the shortness of time, I’ll mention here only two.

One is extraterritorial legislation. The 2007 policy giving priority to Chinese patients has cut down on transplant tourism to China, but such legislation would be a useful statement of universal principle. The sorts of transplants in which the Chinese medical system engages are illegal everywhere else in the world. But it is not illegal for a foreigner from any country to go to China, obtain a transplant which would be illegal at home, and then return home. Foreign transplant legislation everywhere is territorial; it has no extraterritorial reach. Many other laws are global in their sweep. For instance, child sex tourists can be prosecuted not just in the country where they abuse children, but often at home as well. This sort of legislative sanction does not exist for transplant tourists who pay for organ transplants without bothering to determine whether the organ donor has consented.

A second recommendation is that any person known to be involved in trafficking in the organs of prisoners in China should be barred entry by all foreign countries. (to be cont’d)

-From David Kilgour website: http://www.david-kilgour.com/

Canadians Honored for Fight Against Organ Harvesting in China

By Erich Bachmann, Epoch Times Staff, Updated Jan. 20, 2010 –

BERN, Switzerland—“There is an all too prevalent sense that human rights violations [in China] are so massive and so far away that nothing can be done about them,” said David Matas, accepting the 2009 Human Rights Prize from the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Switzerland over the weekend.

David Matas and David Kilgour were co-recipients of the prize for their “unceasing work” on investigating and raising awareness of state-sponsored organ trafficking in China, particularly from imprisoned practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation practice.

Since 2006, the two Canadian lawyers have been traveling the world meeting with government officials, medical professionals, and human rights groups about the “dismaying” results of their investigative research. Research following 52 lines of evidence led them to the conclusion that since 2000, the Chinese regime has been using healthy Falun Gong prisoners of conscience as living organ banks—many recipients being foreigners buying organs in China.

Kilgour said only Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and prisons are systematically blood-tested and physically examined.

“This testing cannot be motivated by concerns over the health of practitioners because they are also systematically tortured,” he said……. (more details from The Epochtimes)

China Organ Harvesting Investigators Get Swiss Human Rights Award

NTDTV, Jan. 19, 2010-

The Swiss International Society for Human Rights awarded Canada’s former Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas their annual Human Rights prize in Bern on Saturday (January 16).

[David Matas, Human Rights Lawyer]:
“It is the voice of individuals around the world which is most likely to lead to respect for human rights.”

The award is for their investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. Falun Gong is a traditional meditation practice that the Chinese regime has been persecuting for more than 10 years—sending hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps.

Kilgour and Matas’ investigative report is called “Bloody Harvest.” It shows 52 points of evidence suggesting the Chinese regime has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to be sold to transplant patients.

They say in 2006, Chinese hospital websites advertised perfectly matched organs and extremely short waiting times for organ transplants—as fast as one to two weeks.

[Dr. Franz Immer, Director of Swiss Transplant]:
“In Europe we wait, on average, two and a half to three years for a kidney, nine to 12 months for a heart or a liver.”…… (more from NTDTV)

Speech: Responsible Engagement With China (1)- Organ Pillaging

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D., German-American Institute, Heidelberg, Germany, 11 January 2010 –

Organ Pillaging

David Matas, a respected Canadian lawyer, and I have come to the dismaying conclusion that Falun Gong practitioners across China have been and are being killed without any form of trial for their organs on a large scale. We wrote as volunteers an independent report that came to this conclusion, which came out in July 2006. There was an updated version in 2007. A book was published late last year titled Bloody Harvest, which was presented at a meeting of the all-party Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline with principles for living, meditation and exercises, which was introduced across China in 1992. Outside the country, it is now practised in about 114 countries. The party-state of China encouraged it initially as beneficial for public health. By 1999, it had grown so popular that the Communist party became afraid that its own supremacy might be threatened. The numbers practising across China had grown from virtually none in 1992, according to a government estimate, to 70-100 million persons. The practice was accordingly banned and practitioners have been demonized in party media with virtually all manner of untruth continuously since 1999.

Practitioners were asked to recant. Those who refused and continued the practice and those who protested the banning were arrested. If they recanted after arrest, they were released. If they did not, they were tortured. If they recanted after torture, they were then released. If they did not recant after torture, many disappeared into the detention and forced labour system.

Our conclusion is that many of the disappeared were killed for their organs, which were sold to transplant tourists. It would take too much time to set out all the reasons we came to that conclusion. We invite you to read our report, which is on the Internet (accessible at www.david-kilgour.com) or our book. Briefly, two of the dozens of evidential trails we followed which led to our conclusion are these:

1) Only Falun Gong practitioners in work camps and prisons are systematically blood tested and physically examined. This testing cannot be motivated by concerns over the health of practitioners because they are also systematically tortured. Testing is necessary for organ transplants because of the need for blood type compatibility between the organ source and the recipient.

2) Traditional sources of transplants–prisoners sentenced to death and then executed, voluntary donors, the brain dead/cardiac alive–come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants done in China since 1999. There is no organized system of organ donations. There is a cultural aversion to organ donation. There is no national organ matching or distribution system.

The only significant source in China of organs for transplants before the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners began in 1999 was prisoners sentenced to death and then executed. The volume of organ transplants in China went up dramatically shortly after the banning of Falun Gong, yet the numbers of persons sentenced to death and then executed did not increase.

We estimate that about 41,500 organs transplanted over the period of persecution up to 2005 came from Falun Gong practitioners. How we reached this conclusion is explained in our book and in our report. We deducted from the 90,000 transplants, which a government spokesman said were done over the period examined, those which came from executed criminals and other explained sources. The difference was 41,500 up until 2005 alone. Consider how much blood money the party-state and its agents, including medical professionals, are making from organ sales and forced labour provided by Falun Gong practitioners. …… (to be cont’d)

-From David Kilgour website: http://www.david-kilgour.com/

Police to question Japanese broker of human organs from China

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan, Nov. 12, 2008-

Police plan by the end of this week to question a Japanese man who brokered more than 100 organ transplants in China for Japanese recipients, according to sources.

Hiroyuki Nagase, 52, headed the China International Organ Transplant Center in Shenyang in China’s Liaoning Province, the activities of which police strongly suspect violated the Organ Transplant Law, which prohibits brokering of organs for profit.

The National Police Agency also is planning to ask China’s public security authorities for their cooperation in investigating the case, which might lead to criminal charges being pursued against an organ brokerage business involving Japan and China.

In 2004, the center started offering on its Web site kidney transplant opportunities to Japanese. The center found Chinese donors for those applying for an organ transplant operation. The operations were carried out by Chinese doctors at hospitals in Shanghai, Shenyang and other Chinese cities. According to the Web site, kidney transplants cost at least \7.8 million, and liver transplants cost at least \13 million, both including operation expenses.

In September last year, Nagase was arrested by Shenyang’s Public Security Bureau on suspicion that the center’s activities had exceeded the business activities for which he had registered his company and that they violated Chinese Health Ministry provisions banning the selling and buying of organs. However, when Nagase was subsequently indicted, charges against him were changed to false advertisement of his organ transplant business.

On Oct. 30, the Shenyang Intermediate People’s Court, a district court, sentenced Nagase to 14 months in prison followed by deportation, and fined him 100,000 yuan (about \1.45 million).

The prison term, which included time he spent detained, ended Monday, and Nagase arrived at Narita Airport on Tuesday evening. Immediately after his arrival, Nagase told The Yomiuri Shimbun that he had brokered 108 organ transplants.

– The Yomiuri Shimbun

Australia urged to ban China’s ‘transplant tourism’

ABC News, Australia, Aug. 11, 2008-

A human rights lawyer from Canada has called on the Australian Government to ban transplant tourism.

David Matas is addressing the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Sydney today, where he says he will present new evidence of forced organ removals from prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Mr Matas says he has audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.

“We had callers calling into China pretending to be relatives of patients asking hospitals if they had organs of Falun Gong practitioners for sale on the basis that the Falun Gong is an exercise regime and they’re healthy, and therefore their organs are healthy, and we got admissions throughout China that yes, we have these organs for sale,” he said.

Mr Matas also says until recently, the main market for these organs was foreigners seeking cheap transplants.

“China still does not have a generation system for organs, does still not have a law allowing for the sourcing of organs from a brain dead cardiac alive, it still does not have a national organ distribution and sharing system, it’s still the overwhelming 90, 95-96 per cent of its organs are sourced from prisoners,” he said.

– Original: ABC News, Australia

China Media’s Organ Donation Report Raises Concern

By Shi Yu, Epoch Times Staff, Apr 15, 2008-

An article published in the April 4th edition of Qi Lu Evening , a newspaper in Shandong Province in eastern China, has attracted people’s attention and recently circulated throughout the Internet.

It reported that a young man temporarily working in Jinan City decided to donate his corneas after a kidney failure diagnosis. However, several major hospitals throughout the area explained that they were “not qualified” to accept the donation. An official in the Ophthalmology Department of the Jinan Central Hospital even mentioned that none of the corneas used by his department came from donations.

This report revisits the concern over the source of organs used for transplants in mainland China. Since witnesses testified on March 9, 2006 that China harvests organs from live Falun Gong practitioners at a hospital in Sujiatun, Shenyang City in northwestern China, Beijing has been confronted with increasing concern over the source of the country’s organ supply. Chinese authorities continue to proclaim that organs come mainly from donations, however the Qi Lu Evening report has further stoked public doubt.

(Photo at right: The Qi Lu Evening Newspaper reported on April 4, 2008 that many hospitals in Shandong Province are not qualified to accept donated organs./The Epoch Times)

Dr. Wang Wenyi, a practicing physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City has long dedicated herself to the investigation of the Chinese regime’s harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. She pointed out that to cover up the organ-harvesting atrocity the Chinese regime has repeatedly lied to the world. When questioned on the source of the organ supply in China, the regime initially claimed that they were donated, but later they admitted that the organs were harvested from death row criminals. However, the large number of organs being used for transplants in recent years, added by the short waiting period for matching organs, indicates the existence of a living organ bank consisting mostly of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners.

The Qi Lu report described the case of Wei Linying, a 29-year-old man temporarily working in Jinan. Diagnosed with serious kidney failure in February, Wei decided to donate his corneas after his death. To help him find a place for donation, his family members came to Jinan and asked the Qi Lu reporter for assistance.

On the afternoon of April 4, the reporter called the Jinan municipal branch office and provincial and municipal branch offices of the Red Cross Society of China, the Shandong Ophthalmology Hospital and the Jinan Central Hospital. All of these medical institutions replied that they were not qualified to accept organ donations.

China expert Zhang Jielian says that the situation in Shandong province is the same across China. Because of their past traditions, Chinese people are not in the habit of donating their organs; as a result, there is no organ donor program in the country. Therefore, donation is not a likely major source for China’s organ supply.

On November 7, 2005, at WHO (World Health Organization) meeting in Manila, China’s Deputy Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, admitted that the Chinese communist regime had been harvesting organs from executed criminals. This was the first official confession the regime made of this practice.

On March 9, 2006, the organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners at the Sujiatun labor camp in Shenyang City was exposed. Confronted with shock and condemnation from the international community, the regime kept silent for 20 days before the regime’s foreign affair spokesman Qin Gang finally denied the allegation, arguing that all organ transplants were legal and had been agreed upon by the donors. Qin proclaimed that most of the organs were donated by patients’ relatives or victims of traffic accidents.

In November 2006, Huang Jiefu repeated in a meeting in Guangzhou that most of the transplanted organs in China were from criminals of death penalty.

In a BBC interview on Nov. 1, 2007, the Chinese regime’s Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan restated that “most of the transplanted organs were from criminals of death penalty.”

Dr. Wang Wenyi, who protested at the White House against Chinese leader Hu Jintao during his state visit on April 20, 2006, said the quantity of organs available from the executed criminals is far lower than the actual number of transplant operations, and it cannot explain why the organ donors can be identified within such a short time, either. She says that the regime’s explanation of harvesting organs from executed criminals is simply to divert public attention away from the organ harvesting of live Falun Gong practitioners.

Dr. Wang said once foreign patients receive notification from hospitals in China and make their payment, the transplant operation can proceed in as little as three days. In most cases, patients receive their organs within a week. Therefore, a “criminal”—with matching blood and tissue types—would have to be executed just a few days before, and be willing to donate his or her organs.

Dr. Wang believes that there is only one possibility to explain this coincidence— there exists an organ bank in China where live donors, whose blood and tissue types have been pre-recorded, can be retrieved whenever a paying customer needs one.

Referring to the Chinese regime’s official data, which mentions that 90,000 organ transplants were conducted before 2005, Wang estimates that 41,500 transplants should have taken place between 2000 and 2005. However, this number far exceeds the criminals executed in China over that time period. Without any other reasonable explanation, the only possible source of organs would be the large population of Falun Gong practitioners whose whereabouts are unknown after being arrested during the past eight years.

An independent Canadian delegate investigation published two reports in 2006, providing substantial evidence to illustrate that such “an evil that has never occurred on earth” has been truly ongoing.

In a report issued by the “World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong” (WOIPFG) in late 2007, the organization has interviewed several Chinese officials, including the coordinator of the kidney source in the Beijing 307 People’s Liberation Army Hospital, the chief and clerk associated with the No. 1 Criminal Court in the Jinzhou Intermediate People’s Court, and the surgeon in charge of kidney transplants at the Guangxi People’s Hospital. The interviewees’ testimony all indicates that a widespread program for organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners is still ongoing in China.

– Original report from The Epochtimes: Chinese Hospitals Do Not Accept Donated Organs

Canadian MP Introduces Bill to Punish Human Organ Harvesting

By Matthew Little, Epoch Times Winnipeg Staff, Feb 21, 2008-

Ontario MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj has introduced a ground-breaking piece of legislation aimed at deterring Canadians from undergoing organ transplants involving organs that were purchased or stolen.

In its first reading, Bill C-500 would make it illegal for Canadians to get an organ transplant abroad if the organ was purchased or taken from an unwilling victim.

“This is the first piece of legislation that specifically addresses the horror of illegal harvesting and trafficking of organs and body parts,” Wrzesnewskyj said in an interview with Epoch Times media partner, NTDTV.

(Canadian MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj / The Epoch Times)

He said that the lack of legislation and increasing reports around the world of organ trafficking or harvesting (killing people for their organs) pushed him to draft the bill.

Years ago Wrzesnewskyj was shocked to hear of an orphanage in the Ukraine that was sacrificing children so their organs could be sold. Later, reports of poor Indian farmers and workers selling their organs for the price of a taxi cab pushed him further.

Reports in 2004 revealed that in some villages in Pakistan, as many as half the people have sold a kidney in the hope of escaping poverty. Some are left permanently disabled by health complications.

Wrzesnewskyj said the final push to act came in the form of a report titled “Bloody Harvest” by two Canadian authors, former Canadian MP and Secretary of State David Kilgour and highly regarded human rights lawyer David Matas.

The 2007 report detailed an array of evidence that strongly suggests the Chinese communist regime is killing thousands of Falun Gong practitioners held in detention and selling their organs in lucrative transplant deals. The report found that Canadians are among the developed world “customers” who travel to China for transplants.

“There was a realization that we have to do something,” said Wrzesnewskyj about the trade in human organs. “Canada has to be in the forefront. Canada has an incredible reputation in addressing this sort of question.”

The legislation itself was laborious to write. Wrzesnewskyj said he began working on it with legal staff and researchers in the House of Commons last summer. The bill went through 12 drafts before being introduced.

He is aware the government may fall before Bill C-500 becomes law but said if that happens it can be re-introduced. He also hopes it will inspire other countries to follow suit.

“It is accessible now to legislators of any country in the world if they are concerned about this issue … There might be some fine tuning involved [to use the legislation in other countries], but there is a template that can be applied in most of our western democracies,” he said.

Bill C-500 aims to treat organ theft or trafficking as a very serious crime, on a level with murder, said Wrzesnewskyj. Minimum sentences are five years and the maximum is life. The legislation would require each organ recipient to prove their organ was obtained ethically from a willing donor.

The bill would also ban people from other countries from entering Canada if it is known they participated in the illicit organ trade. That would include middlemen who purchase organs from impoverished farmers or doctors in Chinese military hospitals performing transplants with organs taken from murdered Falun Gong practitioners.

He pointed out that politicians of any stripe have reason to support the bill and that it is not a partisan issue.

“This is a question of humanity,” he said.

Wrzesnewskyj added that as an MP he is among the few people who can really affect the practice of organ trafficking and harvesting.

“I am compelled not just personally, but on behalf of the people that I represent, to do whatever I can and to stop this sort of horror from occurring.”

He encouraged people in support of Bill C-500 to tell their elected officials that they want it to pass quickly.

– Original report from The Epochtimes: One MP’s Crusade to Quell a Gruesome Trade